


Saskatoon Berry Pie

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Canada, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mounties (RCMP)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sansa loses her family in a rail accident, she makes her way to Saskatchewan in search of sanctuary with her cousin, Jon Snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the gameofshipschallenges Ships of Ice and Fire winter tropes challenge.
> 
> This is a preview, the first chapter essentially, of a long fic I have had in mind for about six months, lovingly referred to as the Mountie!Jon fic, and once I add to it, it will undergo a more fitting title change. So, watch this space.

At home Sansa liked it when her mother bought a lemon meringue pie at the corner bakery on nights when company was coming over. She always thought it the height of indulgence, the epitome of elegance, but she hasn’t had lemons since she went to live with Aunt Lysa and Uncle Petyr. Aunt Lysa didn’t like them and wouldn’t abide them in the house, and while Petyr would have bought them for her if she asked, she knew better than to cross her aunt. Now that she’s in Saskatoon, the chances of stumbling upon lemons are unlikely. The days of lemon meringue pies are probably behind her forever, along with dances with dance cards and white gloves and trolleys and fresh flowers delivered every day. But Mr. Reed said Saskatoon berries make a good pie, and Sansa’s determined to embrace new things, the things that are actually within her reach. So she agreed to try Saskatoon berries and he sent his son, Jojen, out to pick some for her, after she announced she wanted to make something special for dinner tonight to serve their expected guest, Sergeant Jon Snow.

Jon is a cousin that was raised with her back in Philadelphia. He moved to Canada and became a Mountie, a member of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, when she was twelve, and that was the last time she’d seen or had any communication with him. No real loss, since they’d never been close, despite living in the same house together. He was eight years her elder and too somber to be interesting, and he wasn’t her _real_ brother, something that always seemed an important distinction in Sansa’s mind. There was Jon and then there was Robb, who was obviously the most perfect brother a girl could ask for.

Robb didn’t feel that there was that kind of distinction though. They were brothers, true brothers, whether a great white north separated them or not, so Robb kept in touch, and maybe eventually they would have all seen each other again, except there was a rail accident, an accident that irreparably changed her life and saw to it that the Starks and Jon Snow could never again all be in the same room together. In one derailment, her parents and her siblings were all killed, and the connection between her family and Jon was severed.

She went to live with Aunt Lysa in New York, the closest family left to her, and initially she was relieved to be going to stay with people who would love her and take care of her, and she gave no thought to her cousin in Canada. It was only when things started unraveling there that she thought of him again. He was an orphan, just like her, and he was mild mannered and kind if a little solemn. She sat in her window in Uncle Petyr’s house with her head propped in her hand and thought about how good it would be to see him again and how if they were reunited, it would help her remember what it was like when there was a whole noisy household of Starks instead of just her alone. Jon might not be her closest relation, but he wouldn’t shout at her and make threats and belittle every little thing she did. Jon didn’t have it in him to be cruel. He was fair and good. When she finally decided life with Aunt Lysa was unbearable and Aunt Lysa made it clear she would rather her niece disappeared than continue to draw the attention of her husband, Sansa didn’t just daydream about Jon commiserating with her over the loss of their family or taking her side against Aunt Lysa, she began to think of Jon as her escape plan.

Daddy’s lawyer, Mr. Varys, the one Petyr dealt with so she didn’t have to, was happy enough to help, when she contacted him while Petyr was traveling on business. Mr. Varys had an address for Howland Reed, an old buddy of her father’s that helped Jon settle in Canada, when he moved north. Sansa reasoned that Mr. Reed would know how to reach Jon even if the lawyer didn’t, so that’s who she wrote and that’s where she intended to go. Mr. Reed lived in Saskatoon on what looked like the edge of civilization to Sansa, when she peered down at a map spread over Aunt Lysa’s walnut dining room table, but anything was better than where she was. She boarded a train to leave Aunt Lysa and Uncle Petyr and her cousin Robert behind forever, putting her trust in a man she’d never met and in a cousin she hadn’t seen in five years.

Jon was always dutiful. She’s counting on him thinking it is his duty to take the sole remaining child of his adopted father into his custody and protection now that she’s arrived on the doorstep of the north, but if she can show him how useful she could be—keeping his house, darning his socks, cooking and baking for him—he might be convinced that she’ll be less of a burden and more of a happy addition to his household. Men will do something more readily to improve their lives than they will something that is likely to cause them grief, and even if Jon is a good man, surely he’s no different in wanting to be happy.

That’s why this dinner and the pie in particular is so important to her. Except, when she set out to make the perfect dinner for Jon Snow, it was the first time she’d attempted to prepare a dinner. She’d never actually cooked or baked anything in her life, something Aunt Lysa was quick to point out to Petyr, when he praised her quick wit.

_She’s been spoiled. Hardly knows how to do a thing. She’ll never make a decent wife._

Aunt Lysa’s words lodged somewhere in her chest and made her hands tremble as she worked the dough for the crust. The stew and bread Meera helped with, but Sansa wanted the pie to be her creation alone, so that when Jon ate it, he’d be reminded of the benefits of having a woman around. Not just any woman, but Sansa Stark, cheerful, budding domestic. Surely as a bachelor, he’s been surviving on pretty meager fare, and she can fix that with a little practice. That’s the hope she clung to at least until he walked through the door.

He doesn’t look as if he’s been starving, as they sit in uneasy silence over the meal she helped prepare and he reaches for his glass, his shoulders pulling at the wool of his coat. That he looks as well as he does is an odd kind of disappointment, ruining the little picture she painted for herself, in which she would be his savior as much as he potentially could be hers. Sansa sneaks glances at him over her bowl to verify that yes, he looks plenty well fed. Someone’s been cooking for him. He’s tall and broad, filling out his uniform well enough. There was color in his cheeks too, when he stepped through the door, a healthy flush from his walk from the train station or from his excitement or both. His hair’s the same, although the dark curls stand out more against the red of his coat than they ever did against the muted navy, greys, and blacks of his school coats growing up, and she recognizes those sad eyes.

They look like her father’s, which is part of the reason she feels drawn to stare between each small spoonful of stew. While Sansa and her brothers took after their mother, her sister and their cousin Jon had those long Stark faces, dark hair, and grey eyes. There was always a resemblance, but he looks a great deal more like her father than he did five years ago. This must have been what her father looked like the day he married her mother—handsome and serious and probably just as nervous as Jon seems to be sitting across from her at the Howlands’ table.

The years have made Jon look more like a man and less like a boy, but then, she looks older too, she thinks, as she smoothes her skirts—blue with ruffles, too dressy for the occasion, but chosen because it’s the prettiest dress she owns and makes her look the oldest, nipping in at the waist with a broad, white belt she fastened one hook tighter than usual to make the most of what nature had given her in the last year. He’s the only person left that would recognize how much she’s changed, and she wishes he’d comment on it, but he hasn’t. He’s never been one to prattle on, but he’s even quieter than usual. Some little compliment directed her way would help put her worries to rest, help assure her that she is winning him over.

It wasn’t the change in her appearance that made him gawk, when Mr. Reed opened the door and Jon stepped through with another red coated man with graying hair at his heels, coming back into her life in a gust of warm wind off the prairie. She only had to see his mouth go slack in silent shock to realize that he expected Arya, her little sister, who Jon doted on when they were children, and for what felt like a full minute everyone stood in silence as he stared back at her, feet astride, and eyes wide. The confusion was straightened out with some awkward clearing of throats among the men, as she forced herself to move over the linoleum to kiss his cheek and tell him how good it was to see him.

And it was. Her heart thumped hard in her chest and she wanted to wrap her arms around his neck, but it was more painful than it was sweet, because it was clear that he wanted someone else.

 _My apologies_ , Mr. Reed said, though whether he was apologizing to her or Jon wasn’t made clear. The letter Mr. Reed sent Jon about Sansa’s imminent arrival by train only referred to her as ‘Ned’s daughter,’ and Jon drew his conclusions.

_I didn’t expect you’d ever come looking for me. I didn’t even know anyone survived the accident until I got Howland’s letter._

She hadn’t survived it, so there was no mention of her in the newspapers that publicized the prominent Philadelphians killed in the tragic rail accident. She hadn’t been on the train at all. She’d refused to go on holiday with the rest of the family, because she wanted to stay with the Lannisters, so she could spend her summer making eyes at Joffrey, freshly home from Princeton and looking so smart in his short sleeves and pressed slacks with his blond hair and mischievous grin. Mrs. Lannister had pleaded on Sansa’s behalf and her mother finally agreed to let her stay behind. Not getting on that train was hardly the blessing some people wanted her to believe it was. Getting her way was the cosmic joke that left her alone in the world.

Alone except for Jon, who doesn’t really want her. Her plan to win his regard with pie seems increasingly ridiculous, since Sansa senses Jon’s sullen discomfort with every shoveled bite of stew he brings to his mouth. At least the stew isn’t a failure. He wipes the bowl with his bread and leans his elbows on the table, eating eagerly enough even if he can’t meet her eyes.

He’d rather it was Arya that traveled west to be his companion, because he loved her sister. Sansa can hardly blame him. The two of them would have been happy in whatever dreary conditions Jon’s station post boasts. Now that Sansa’s seen what life is like here, she knows Arya would have thrived on the prairies as much as she was totally out of place in the society of Philadelphia.

It’s not like that for Sansa. She stepped onto the platform in Saskatoon and felt nothing but a hollow ache, when she stared out over the flat expanse of the newly green prairie and ranging cattle. There are no guarantees either Jon or Sansa will be happy together, sharing a home in this untamed land. Still, Sansa intends to try for both their sakes if he’ll take her. And there’s one thing she knows: Arya wouldn’t have ever gone to the effort of making anyone a pie and she would have let him wander around with holes in his socks. Those are the advantages left to her and she must make the most of them.

“It was good, Meera,” Jon says, pushing away the empty bowl to show he’s finished, and Sansa can’t help but think his manners haven’t remarkably improved with time and seclusion.

Meera is older than Sansa by four years, old enough that she could have a husband instead of tending to her brother and father and their ranch hands, but she seems well suited to a place like this. In the time Sansa’s been here, she’s watched as Meera left with her father to hunt and fish, while her brother Jojen stayed home and scribbled away in his journal that he won’t let anyone read. Meera’s merry and attractive. That she’s a little skinny and short like a boy doesn’t stop some of the men from paying her mind. Theon Greyjoy, one of Howland’s hands, always stares at her during dinner and tonight’s no different. He always looks like he’s planning something, but he’s not the only one that casts eyes her way.

Sansa can only hope Jon isn’t as interested in Meera as Mr. Greyjoy seems to be, because Jon’s less likely to let Sansa stay with him if he’s thinking about settling down. A couple of weeks with Aunt Lysa and Sansa learned that wives don’t appreciate single young ladies being introduced into their homes.

Bless Meera though, she’s a good friend to have, because as she gathers up the bowls, she puts in, “You ought to thank Sansa too. She helped and she’s made us a pie.”

“I’ll get it,” Sansa says, eager to leave the table and bring in her dessert, the coup de grace.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” Mr. Reed says, patting his stomach. “Bring us all a slice, honey.”

She cuts Sergeant Tollett and Sergeant Snow’s pieces first, since they’re guests, but gives Mr. Reed and Mr. Greyjoy equally large slices with a little smile and bat of her lashes as she sets their plates down in front of them. It doesn’t leave much of the pie for her and Meera and Jojen, but she’s full and neither Meera nor Jojen ever eat very much. Besides, what she’s most interested in isn’t tasting the pie herself, it’s watching Jon eat the fruits of her labor.

Mr. Reed digs in first, taking a big scooping bite, but she doesn’t bother to observe his reaction. Mr. Reed is easy to please, a generous, genial man that she can easily imagine being friends with her father; he’ll be satisfied even if the crust isn’t as buttery and flaky as the ones her mother purchased. Jon’s not hard to please either, but he knows how good those pies from their childhood were, he must remember as well as she does, so she watches through her lashes, as Jon brings his first bite up to his mouth, while she pokes at her plate, trying to look as if she isn’t desperately awaiting his praise. There’s too long of a pause between the pie passing his lips and his thick swallow, a pause that makes her glance around the table to see several oddly contorted faces staring down into their plates.

“Good?” she asks.

“It’s delicious, honey,” Mr. Reed says, setting his fork down. “Just so rich after that big meal. Don’t know whether I could eat another bite.”

Sergeant Tollett, who’s been mostly quiet tonight at Jon’s side, no doubt as a result of the tension present at this awkward family reunion, tilts his head, as he inspects the tines of his fork, “Well, you might eat another bite, but no telling whether you’d live to…”

Whatever he means to say is cut off by a thump under the table that makes Sergeant Tollett jerk in his chair and tuck his chin down.

Sansa’s heart begins to race, as she pushes her fork into the crust, determined to taste for herself why the table’s gone so strangely quiet. It looks pretty. Perhaps not a basket weave crust like she’d liked to have attempted, but it looks serviceable and the density seems right, as she scoops it onto her fork. There’s no guessing its flavor. She didn’t actually taste the berries while preparing the pie, since she wanted to make sure she’d have enough. They looked like blueberries, but this pie tastes nothing like blueberries. She wrinkles her nose. It’s salty, which is more than passing strange, since she never tasted a salty berry before. Tart is one thing, she likes tart, but pies shouldn’t be salty. It’s only her pride that makes her swallow the mouthful and then reach for her glass to wash the lingering taste away.

She must have done something wrong. Mr. Reed said Saskatoon berries were good. He waxed poetic about it all day long. Jojen’s fingers were stained blue, when he came back from picking them, and his lips too, evidence that he couldn’t wait for them to be baked into a pie to sample their delights. It’s not the berries. It’s her incompetence. This is the opposite of everything she wanted. She blinks, willing tears not to form, when she hears a fork scrape against a plate and looks up to see Jon taking another monstrous bite.

“It’s the best I’ve ever had,” he says, talking around the food tucked in his cheek, while he breaks off yet a further piece.

“It’s not lemon meringue, I’m afraid,” she says with what she hopes is a convincing smile.

“No, that it isn’t, but the good news is that you’re awfully pretty, Miss Stark,” Mr. Greyjoy says with a wink and pushes back from the table, as she feels her cheeks heat. It’s the compliment she was looking for, but from the wrong man. “Excuse me. I’m going to have a smoke.”

“I’ll join you, Greyjoy. Delicious dinner, girls. Thank you,” Mr. Reeds says, and Sergeant Tollett and Jon stand too, nodding their thanks, Jon still wiping his mouth, as they depart for the front porch to puff on pipes and talk about the weather.

The table is almost cleared, when Sansa stands up straight, wipes her hands on her apron, and works up the courage to ask Meera, “I didn’t do it right, did I? It tasted wretched.”

Meera talks into the waste bin, scraping the last of the dishes, “I think you switched salt for sugar, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Sergeant Snow didn’t seem to mind. He about finished his whole piece, and he’s the one you were hoping to impress, I imagine.”

Sansa lets her eyes slip closed, cursing her stupidity. Who mistakes salt for sugar? And was she really that blatantly obvious in her pathetic attempts to impress Jon? It’s enough to make her want to flop back down in one of the chairs and bury her face in her arms, but there are dishes to wash and dry and somehow she has to convince Jon before he leaves tonight that he should take her with him, so she shakes off her self pity and grabs for a towel, since drying is less unpleasant a task than washing. The quicker this stack of dirty dishes is finished, the quicker she can join the men on the porch and work to undo the damage her ineptitude at all things domestic has already done.

Meera comes to stand by her and gives her a little bump with her hip. “You drying?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Meera’s answer is to dunk the first plate in the water. “I can tell you’re stewing, but he ate it even if it did taste like a salt lick. There’s only one reason a man would subject himself to bad food like that with such gusto.”

Martyrdom, perhaps. “He was trying to be nice.” Or trying to make up for his reaction, when he barely put his arm around her, as she kissed his cheek. He never was the kind of boy who wanted to hurt people’s feelings. Sansa doubts he’s any different as a man grown. He’s probably mentally abusing himself for not doing a better job of feigning excitement to see her, but Jon’s always been an unconvincing liar.

“Sergeant Snow is a nice man, but I’m willing to bet that’s not the whole of it.”

Meera speaks as if she had some knowledge on the subject, and a queer feeling stirs in Sansa’s chest. Sansa imagined that she and Jon would share a personal history no one else would ever be able to boast. It’s one of the things she hoped would help them grow to be comfortable with each other in time. “How well do you know him?”

“Oh, we all know Sergeant Snow. Everybody from here to High Prairie, I suppose. He’s real helpful even if not everybody is thrilled to see a lawman. Most of us are glad to have him around.”

Jon’s somebody around here, and while she should be happy for him, the idea of his local popularity only deepens her unease. “Has he,” Sansa begins but can’t make herself say what it is she’d like to really know. Has he got a girl, a fiancée, someone who might object to her returning with him to the north? “Lots of friends?”

“Sure. Course he does.” Meera leans into the sink up to her elbows. “Never takes a girl to any of the barn dances though, despite those pretty curls of his.”

When they were younger, Jon wasn’t good with girls the way her brother was, but this news comes as something of a relief. “Probably because he’s a terrible dancer. He’ll step on your toes ten times before a dance is over.” She’d know, they learned together in the parlor, when she was half his height.

Meera laughs. “That might be, but wouldn’t it be worth it to wrap those curls around your finger?”

Sansa rolls her eyes, although the suggestion prompts an image in her mind that makes her feel suddenly too warm, and she lifts her apron to dab at her neck. It’s hardly fair that Jon has the kind of soft curls that girls tie their hair in rags at night to achieve. Lovely, long dark lashes too.

“I’m only saying that plenty of girls will be very jealous of you, Sansa, if you go back with him.”

Sansa gives the plate she’s drying a rather aggressive swipe of the towel. “I’m not sure he’ll take me. I proved how useful I could be, didn’t I?”

“He couldn’t stop staring at you,” Meera says with a shrug. “You can always learn how to cook later.”

“He was only staring because he was expecting my little sister. He was in shock, and not the good kind.”

Meera shakes her head. “I think he was expecting a little girl all right. You must look rather different from what he remembers.”

“So does he.”

“Is that right? How’s our Sergeant Snow different?”

Sansa’s too embarrassed to comment on the breadth of him, which seems rather personal, so she fibs. “Taller, I guess.”

“Too tall,” Meera says, rising up on the balls of her feet. “A girl would have to bend her neck back like a crane to kiss him.”

Meera would. Not every girl would need to however. “I like that he’s tall.”

“Oh, I see,” Meera says with arched brows, handing her the last plate to dry.

“Don’t repeat that, Meera,” she says with unaccustomed sternness. If Meera told tales, that little comment could cost her. He might misunderstand, and she doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. We can’t go telling men like Sergeant Snow that we like that they’re tall or that we admire them in their uniform, can we? Unless you think he’d like to hear such a thing,” Meera says, nodding at the window, outside of which a cloud of pipe smoke drifts by. “You might tell him yourself. We’re about finished up here.”

“I should go talk to him a little,” Sansa says, nervously wiping her hands over her apron.

“Just a little,” Meera agrees.

Sansa unwraps the apron from about her waist, folds it on the counter, and moves towards the door. It’s open a crack with just the screen door keeping the bothersome summer bugs at bay, and she can hear the men’s laughter, as her hand closes on the cool metal handle.

“Just think, Snow, marry her and you could have a pie like that every night.”

“If you do, you’ll be dead by winter,” someone responds, and Sansa lets her hand drop.

“I’m made of tougher stuff. I’ll gladly stomach her pies if you’re afraid to marry her, Sergeant.”

It’s Mr. Greyjoy’s voice this time, she recognizes it before she hears Jon’s gruff command to silence the hand’s joke. It has to be a joke, for surely they’re all teasing. Marriage was never discussed as an option for her, a solution to what to do with her now that she’s arrived by train to the middle of the prairie with a suitcase full of city dresses and no skill at sitting a horse. There was no talk of marriage. Not by Mr. Reed and certainly none in Jon’s letter, the one he sent to Mr. Reed, assuring him he would be there by July, the one Mr. Reed let her keep, which she’s read at least fifty times since arriving in Saskatoon.

“I’m sorry, Jon. It’s nothing against you, but I don’t think I can let you take her into the wilds without knowing she’ll be cared for properly. Her father isn’t here to protect her, so I have to say something.”

“Of course I’ll care for her, Howland.”

Sansa presses her hand over her mouth. They’re serious. They’re discussing her as if she is an object to be disposed of. It’s as bad as when Aunt Lysa would talk about the old men she wanted to bring to the house in hopes that one of them would marry her and take her off her aunt’s hands. Sansa’s feelings apparently are not to be consulted. They’re of no more consequence here than they were back east.

It’s the feeling of being a pawn in one of Petyr’s games of chess that makes her walk right out amongst them in the midst of their discussion. At least Jon and Sergeant Tollett have the good sense to look down at their boots in embarrassment, but Mr. Reed doesn’t appear ashamed of what he’s said in her absence at all and Mr. Greyjoy grins back at her, looking mighty amused.

“You were speaking about me?” she says, folding her hands behind her back and lifting her chin just a hair in defiance.

“Theon, why don’t you show Sergeant Tollett the new little filly we got in the back pen,” Mr. Reed speaks around his pipe with a nod towards the barn.

Sergeant Tollett seems happy to escape, although Mr. Greyjoy is obviously annoyed at being dismissed.  He still plays the gentleman though, tipping his head at her before he jumps down the two steps with one hand on the rail. “Evening, Miss Stark.”

“Evening, Mr. Greyjoy, Sergeant Tollett.”

“Come have a seat by Jon, honey,” Mr. Reed suggests, and Jon scoots down on the backless bench he’s perched on, still fixedly staring at the wide plank floor of the porch.

She sits right on the edge of the white washed bench as prim as can be before saying with steely determination, “I won’t marry anyone without being consulted on the matter, no matter how right you might think the arrangement, Mr. Reed, while I greatly appreciate the kindness you’ve shown me under your roof.”

“No one’s going to make you marry anyone, Sansa,” Jon says, turning his head enough that she can see the high color on his cheeks. It probably matches hers. There are decided liabilities to being as pale as a lily. “I promise.”

Mr. Reed pulls the pipe from his mouth. “Very gentlemanly of you, Jon, but my reasons for suggesting it stand. It’s a harsh place up north, no place for a single young woman.”

“It _is_ harsh,” Jon agrees, and she can see how his eyes skim her skirts, and though she thought she looked appealing in the mirror hanging in the room she shares with Meera, she wishes she hadn’t dressed quite so fine. “Maybe it’s best you go back to your Aunt Lysa, Sansa.”

“Now from what the girl’s told me, that’s not an option at all. We won’t consider that.”

She’s thankful Mr. Reed said it so she doesn’t have to. She can’t ever go back to Aunt Lysa’s, but she’d be ashamed to tell Jon why. He might think she encouraged Petyr, as Lysa did, and she doesn’t want him believing she’s that kind of girl. Just thinking about it makes her pull her feet in closer underneath herself.

The next thing Mr. Reed says, however, is not quite as endearing. “But we must consider that she’s young.”

Sansa doesn’t know whether it works for or against her to say it, but she can’t let the comment pass without defending herself. “I’m not _that_ young.”

“You’re young,” Jon agrees, and Sansa has to bite back a scowl every bit as deep as his.

“I suppose time will take care of that, and you’ve been through more than plenty of girls your age,” Mr. Reed says, considering her with somewhat hooded eyes before turning his attention to Jon. “What year was it you joined the company, Jon?”

There’s an inexplicable reluctance on Jon’s part to respond. He shifts on the bench and scuffs one boot against the floor before admitting in a lowered voice. “Aught five.”

“You’ve got your five years in then. No reason why you couldn’t marry. Man can’t marry until he’s got his five years in with the Mounted, you see, honey.” Mr. Reed gestures at Jon with the pipe. “Jon’s a good man. Says he’ll take care of you. Seems a good enough match, but if you want to be consulted, I’ll leave the two of you to the consulting,” he says standing up with an audible creak and then slaps Jon on the shoulder the way men do when they’re trying to show they care.

He probably thinks he’s doing what’s best for his friend’s daughter. Probably thinks it will work out best for the both of them if they marry, but Sansa’s worried his dictate will only scare Jon away entirely. Then what will become of her?

As Mr. Reed wanders away into the increasing gloom of the evening with his arms crossed over his chest and his pipe trailing clouds, Jon clears his throat. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Who knew a friend of Daddy’s could be such a matchmaker.”

He straightens up and his smile almost reaches his eyes before dying out like a snuffed candle flame. “We haven’t even had a chance to talk about your family or how you’re doing.”

Sansa stares out over the flatness, the total never ending flatness towards the town, where lights flicker in the distance and the squat box like buildings rise above the horizon. “There isn’t much to say. I’m surviving. I’d survive your wild north too. I’m stronger than I look.”

“You probably are,” he says, leaning back against the house. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. To help you after.”

“You’re here now.”

He takes her hand, where it lays between them on the bench. It’s the first time he’s reached for her. It’s the first hint he might want her, and it takes some of that strength that’s been tested in the last year to keep from leaning into his chest and letting all those tears she’s held back flow at this small kindness from the only person left to her from before.

“This isn’t at all how I imagined tonight would go,” she confesses softly, her lips loosened by his gesture.

“What did you imagine?”

“I thought we’d be restored to each other, that you’d be starving for company and good food and I’d give both of that to you, so you’d want to take me away and things would get better for us both. I thought you’d like my dress. Why would you care about my dress?”

“It’s a nice dress.”

She can hear the embarrassment in his voice at the admission and gives his hand a squeeze. “It was silly. Girlish nonsense. We were never close.”

“I know I wasn’t your favorite.”

“Nor I yours. That doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Doesn’t it? With talk of marriage?”

She tries to imagine it. Meera said girls would be jealous of her. He’s the kind of man that other girls want for their own it would seem. Could she want him too? Would it be so different being his wife than it would be if she only kept his house as his relation? They would share a bed, but maybe that would be nice. They could have a little family. She feels her cheeks heat again. Here she is imagining their future, when he doesn’t seem to think very much of Mr. Reed’s suggestion. He might be quite happy as a bachelor, admired by all and completely unfettered.

“How are _you_ , Jon?”

His thumb brushes over the back of her hand, and maybe she doesn’t know how to cook or bake a pie, but she knows her hands are soft. “A man can get lonely.”

And that settles it for her. Almost. All but the small part of her that trembles at the thought of saying yes to Jon and his life forever. But she tries Meera’s suggestion out. “Shame to be lonely, when you’re so handsome in your uniform.”

Jon huffs, looking slightly off to the side away from her. “You’ve lost your mind, Sansa Stark.”

“No, I’ve been lonely too. We might not be so lonely together. We might be some company for each other. I’m not as spoilt as I once was.”

“Course you’re not. You’re fine, Sansa, and I’d be lucky to share your company. But my orders take me to Edmonton for the summer. I’ll have to leave again tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” It’s all Sansa can manage. He’s leaving her. Either because she’s not Arya or because of Mr. Reed’s insistence that they be married.

“I’ll be back in two months, and you can give me an answer, when I return.”

It takes a moment for his words to register, while she looks down at their clasped hands, and when it does she wonders if she’s misheard. “That isn’t a proposal of marriage, is it?”

“Depends on what your answer will be, I guess,” Jon says, pulling his hand free to rub his chin.

“You’d really agree to marry me after tasting my pie?”

At that he really does laugh. It’s a nice sound, his laugh. Deep and resonant in the emptiness of this place. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sorry for you then. It was nice of you to eat it though.”

He shrugs off her remark, tucking his hands under his arms. “Howland’s not wrong. It’d be better if we were married. No one up there would understand a white woman, a refined city girl like you, unmarried, living with a Mountie. Wouldn’t be proper.”

“Well, if it’s a matter of propriety,” Sansa says, the corner of her mouth quirking as a noise from inside the house draws her attention to the screen door. She’s always been the one to worry about such things, more so than the rest of her siblings. “You ought to have said so from the start and avoided my stubborn outburst.”

“I’d have been worried if you didn’t come stomping out here, hearing yourself be talked about like that.” He taps his boot and rubs his hands over the length of his trousers. “I don’t know how much you heard, but I would take care of you.”

“Course you would.” She doesn’t know if he is the husband she’d choose amongst all the men of her acquaintance or if she’d be the wife of his choice, but whoever Jon might marry, he’d be a good husband to her.

He nods. “Would two months be enough for you to decide?”

“Yes, probably.”

Probably enough time for him to decide whether he wants to actually come back from Edmonton or whether it would be better to leave her in Mr. Reed’s hands. She isn’t the only one being asked to make a weighty choice after all. But with him gone, there’d be no chance to get to know each other as they are now, there’d be no chance that this could develop into something they wanted, rather than a marriage of pure convenience, an answer to wagging tongues. She might look like her mother and he might have the appearance of her father, but this would be no more than a pale reflection of her parents’ loving marriage.

“All right then.”

It certainly isn’t the proposal of her dreams, the one she imagined from the time she was little, but there is something comforting about his voice, about his presence here beside her, despite the disappointments of the evening. That’s what she’ll focus on while he’s gone, as she tries to build something in her heart for him that isn’t based on hopeful foolishness. And they still have a few minutes yet to draw out the moment and fix it in her mind.

“Will you sit with me here until it’s time to turn in, Jon?”

“If you like.”

“I would.” She reaches for his hand this time, letting the dark obscure her boldness. “No harm if we hold hands, is there?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“We’re practically engaged.”

“Yes, I suppose we are.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa receives a package.

Men like Mr. Greyjoy wouldn’t have been considered proper escorts for young ladies back in Philadelphia, but there’s no cure for it here and certainly no one looks askance at Meera and Sansa climbing out of the wagon they perched in for a rather bumpy ride into town. He leaves them off at the corner by the lumberyard and it only takes walking a short piece down 2nd Avenue for Sansa to feel wet curls forming on the back of her neck. The hot wind does nothing to keep a body cool, but it does set the flags atop the buildings waving. To prevent the wind from robbing her of her hat, Sansa has to press her hand to the crown of her head, as they linger by a store window so Meera can admire the new stock.

It might not be that new. It’s not every day Sansa finds herself in town and normally she would be just as leisurely about her perusal as Meera is. It’s too far to walk from the Reed homestead, Mr. Reed is too careworn to be always running into town, and the hands are needed on the ranch. Today is special. Today an exception has been made.

Given the novelty, Sansa can understand her friend’s desire to make the most of their afternoon, even if Sansa would rather hurry to the Post Office directly. They’ve come to fetch something waiting for her there. The Postmaster wouldn’t give it over to Mr. Reed. There was a note with strict instructions that it be delivered directly into her hands. It’s the only reason they managed to steal a carefree afternoon for themselves, while Mr. Greyjoy collects odds and ends that are needed back at the ranch.

The mystery isn’t in who might have sent her something. She’s received two letters from Jon, and based on contents of the last one, she thinks a third one must have gone astray. A fact she stewed over for two days, imagining something of import might have been lost as a result, such as a hint of enthusiasm on his part for their proposed marriage.

 _He shouldn’t write me at all_ , Sansa complained to Meera, carefully folding the letter after reading through it for the sixth time, while Meera helped her put her hair up for the night.

_I’d think you’d be happy to hear from your intended._

_It isn’t proper writing me direct. If he means to think of me, he might do it in a postscript to a letter for your father._

With a pin in her mouth, Meera raised her brows at her in the mirror’s reflection.  _It’s better you two sort it out between yourselves. Father would be a rather sorry writer of love letters._

Jon’s no better at it than Mr. Reed. The second and last letter merely reminded her of his imminent return. A sadly brief and perfunctory missive to receive on the eve of their marriage. Hardly something worth disregarding etiquette for. His letters have been so plain that she doesn’t know him any better than she did prior to their reunion nigh on two months ago.

Unless these letters spell out exactly who Jon is. It could be that while Jon is a kind man, he is entirely practical and devoid of fairer sentiment. Or he is not keen to marry her and doesn’t know how to honorably back out of their agreement.

Uneasiness crawls in her belly, warring with a childish kind of hopefulness, as she watches Meera wander from storefront to storefront with her nose inches from the glass. Sansa knows the package must be from Jon, but the real mystery is what he has seen fit to send to her beyond another disappointing letter.

Sansa’s doesn’t mean to sigh, while staring across the street towards the Post Office. It’s only because she feels as if she is wilting as sadly as her mother’s blue hydrangeas in too much sun that it slips out.

Meera looks up at her, one hand raised to shade her eyes and smiles a wrinkled nose smile up at her. “You’re about ready to burst, aren’t you?” she asks, threading her arm through Sansa’s. “We’ll get you over to the Post, so you can stop looking so deathly pale.”

“I’m perfectly all right,” Sansa says, though she knows she’s half dragging Meera’s shorter frame across the street now that she’s freed from the window shopping. “Only a little warm.”

“You might have told me how anxious you were to see what our Sergeant Snow sent you.”

As reticent as Jon’s letters have been, Sansa would rather not give the appearance of being overly eager. “You know it isn’t that way between us. I haven’t received a package in ages is all.”

Meera is good enough not to push the issue, though Sansa’s reprieve is short lived. Once they step inside the Post Office, Meera announces with rather too much enthusiasm that Miss Stark has come for her package, sending the Postmaster scrambling. Sansa folds her hands before her. The lace of her gloves itches between her fingers, making her want to fidget and it is only years of decorum lessons that stop her as she waits for the man to return.

They are not alone before the counter. Standing alongside them in the fine layer of dust that has blown in from the streets is another young lady. One who is very beautiful if a little rough looking. Meera stares at her long enough that she is forced to acknowledge Meera with a curt nod.

“Afternoon, Val.”

“Meera,” the woman responds just as the skinny, bald man scurries back in with a brown paper wrapped package tied up in string.

“Here you go, Miss Stark,” he says, handing it over the counter.

It gives in her hands, the contents sagging when she takes it from him, and half the items she pictured in her mind as possibilities are dismissed as not soft enough or too large to be wrapped up inside.

“Open it up or we’ll have no peace all afternoon,” Meera says, while sticking her hand out across the counter. “A scissors, please.”

The young lady makes a sound of annoyance, no doubt at the length of this transaction, which must be keeping her from conducting her own business with the Postmaster. Meera’s explanation that the package is from Sergeant Snow does nothing to cool the lady’s irritation. Sansa is too caught up in the moment, however, to properly apologize for monopolizing the counter and the Postmaster’s time, after taking the scissors from his calloused hands and cutting the strings.

Jon’s hand scrawls over the front, instructing the Post Master to deliver this into her hands. Whatever compelled him to be so particular lends an urgency to her fingers, as she peels back the layers of paper and Meera leans in close to watch the reveal.

Her breath catches in her throat.

“It’s ivory,” Meera says, pinching Sansa’s arm. “That’ll be your wedding dress, I wager.”

There was a time not so long ago that Sansa dreamed of her wedding dress and envied the older girls she knew, who walked down the aisle of their church in the latest wedding fashions. Designs from New York, London, even France. The finest fabrics. The most recent accessories. Paired with the best family jewels. The skirts are narrower now than in her mother’s day. Necks not as high either. Mother thought Margaery’s dress was obscene, though Sansa admired the yards of lace her friend wore on the day she was married.

Despite all the time Sansa once spent daydreaming about such things, she’s given hardly any thought to what she might wear if Jon came back to Saskatoon to marry her. When he came to dinner, she wore her finest dress, meaning to impress him with how grown she was, but it only made her look out of place. It made him worry she was unsuited for his wild north. She would have been better off wearing her plainest day dress and forgetting the fancies of her past.

And yet, as she unfolds the soft ivory linen, she can see how very fine this dress is. It’s not as daring as Margaery’s dress, nor as heavy with lace, but it more than makes up for those things by being perfectly to her taste.

“It must be from back east,” Meera says, as the dress unfurls towards the floor. “A special order. You’ll be quite the sight in this,” she says, running her fingers over the delicate neckline. “They’ll write about it in the  _Saskatoon Capital_.”

Sansa watches Meera trace the satin buttons, taking enjoyment in her friend’s open admiration, but she can’t seem to make herself do anything but blink down at the beautiful dress, while questions assault her. Did he pick it out himself? Surely not. His uniform was smart and well maintained, but that didn’t mean Jon Snow knew the least thing about women’s fashion. Then did some store woman assist him? Did he describe to her what might best suit his intended bride? He must have given some guidance to her for the dress to turn out this perfect.

It would have cost him dear too. Sansa doesn’t know what Jon receives as pay, but surely this magnitude of a purchase was unheard of on a Mountie’s salary.

“You’re marrying our Sergeant Snow?”

For a moment Sansa can’t figure what or who has interrupted her awestruck examination, until the question is repeated at twice the original volume. She comes back to herself with a deep breath that doesn’t clear the tightness she feels in her chest in looking at her specially chosen dress. It doesn’t ease the sting of this young lady calling Jon ‘our Sergeant Snow’ either. It is one thing for Meera to do it–Sansa doesn’t mind that. But it is a rather familiar way to speak about someone in Jon’s respected position.

“As soon as he gets back from Edmonton.”

It is the first time Sansa has spoken with such certainty about the event, but the lady’s narrowed eyes and the weight of the dress dangling from Sansa’s fingers urges her to confirm it.

“There are real benefits to having your intended sent to Edmonton,” Meera says with an evaluative gaze. “You couldn’t get anything this fashionable here.”

Val makes a rude noise, as she shuffles through the stack of letters the Postmaster handed her, while Sansa worked at unwrapping the package. The lady is pretty–no one has blonde hair that bright past sixteen–but Sansa notices her hands are rougher than Meera’s.

“I thought Sergeant Snow had eyes for Alys,” the woman says, grinning up from her letters. “My mistake.”

She walks out the door with a heavy thud that only work boots could make hidden beneath her faded cotton skirts.

Meera moves to gather up Sansa’s dress into a tidy bundle, and Sansa does her best to help with hands that don’t want to cooperate. There’s no salvaging all of the wrapping paper, but they do manage to get the dress mostly protected from the elements with the crinkled brown paper and leftover string before heading back out with a thank you for the Postmaster.

Meera wants to look for a length of fabric she insists Sansa needs for some missing item in her trousseau. The dress has inspired her friend to make something more of this wedding than anyone thought to this morning, and while it has set Sansa’s heart pounding, she can’t find it in herself to enjoy the moment the way she might have if Val hadn’t spoken up.

“Who is Alys?”

“Pay Val no mind,” Meera says. “She only wanted to ruffle your feathers.”

“But there is an Alys.”

“Course there is. Alys is Rickard Karstark’s only girl. About your age. Maybe a hair older.”

“And Jon fancied her?” Sansa asks, looking up at the General Store’s newly painted sign with calculated disinterest in Meera’s response.

Meera pauses with her hand poised on the doorknob of the store. “Someone might think you jealous, asking questions like that.”

“I’m not,” Sansa insists, as Meera pulls on the door, setting off the twinkle of bells. “But I agreed to consider marrying him on the understanding that he had no prior attachments.”

“You can’t expect a man to have never looked at another woman before settling on you.”

Sansa swallows, turning towards the buttery colored candles that hang from uncut wicks. Meera didn’t mean it, but she’s hit upon one of Sansa’s worst fears: that Jon is settling and he’ll come to hate her for it. Gratitude should keep her from despising him, should they prove a bad match, but she can barely feed a husband and if he does not have a mountain of shirts and socks to mend, she will be nothing but a burden.

“I wouldn’t worry your head about it,” Meera says, picking up a tin of solid perfume and bringing it to her nose. It’s rejected with a shake of her head, but before she sets it back down, she gestures with it at the bundle tucked under Sansa’s arm. “I saw the way he stared at you. He got that dress for you, not Alys, and he’s as eager to get you out of it as you are to put it on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ended up writing this second chapter for a prompt fill request on tumblr. I will continue this fic in the coming months as A City wraps up. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm for this 'verse!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon returns to Saskatoon.

Chapter Three

At home, she and Jon would have been engaged for at least a year after being promised to each other. Maybe two. There would have been negotiations on both sides: on his to make the space between announcing the engagement and marriage shorter and on hers, prompted by her mother and aunts and nosey busybodies, to ensure it was as long as possible. Nice girls have long engagements and the nice men they’re engaged to don’t insist on moving those engagements up. At least, they don’t push too hard. Just hard enough to prove they’re madly in love.

No one getting married today is madly in love, but a long engagement would have had its advantages. Lengthy engagements give a girl time to prepare a hand-embroidered trousseau with a suitable number of dozens. Meera helped Sansa do her best to fill up her trunk, but she has other duties that take precedence and she obviously likes fishing and hunting better than bending over a scrap of linen. No one out here is terribly concerned about elaborate trousseaus: no one has the time for them, and no one voluntarily waits two years to be married. The farther you get into the wilderness, the better chance that in two years time a person could be below ground in a windblown churchyard.

It’s not a cheery thought, and glancing over at the too thinly filled trunk, Sansa feels a needle of regret at what might have been. Not just for the trousseau but for the life she once dreamt of that is lost to her along with her family.

Jon’s all that she has left, and he’ll be hers forever after today. There’s real comfort in that.

She can only hope that the brief glimpse Jon got of her last night served her better than an extended engagement ever could. This time she knew better than to wear her finest dress, though she did try on all four of her day dresses and twisted from side to side, trying to see in the mirror which of them made her look the most grown. When she’d settled on the right one and Jon had arrived dusty from the train, she sat straight like her mother taught her and let her hair drape over her shoulder, brushed out and shining. With any luck, it was enough to leave him anticipating and not dreading their wedding.

Or wedding night. Jon isn’t the husband she would have imagined for herself—her younger self would have cried for days, thinking of living in the middle of nowhere with her solemn cousin—but she isn’t afraid of him. Still, it turns her pink in any number of places, when she thinks how tonight she’ll be sharing a sleeper berth with him.

She can hear his low voice through the door, as she runs a sponge up over her arm and sinks lower in the tub Meera filled with water hot enough to scald. His words are muffled but she can just make them out, asking Mr. Reed how Sansa fared while he was gone.

Sansa tried not to let her expectations run away with her the way she did when last she saw Jon, but a multitude of small disappointments managed to crop up last night. Not the mention that he hardly spoke to her at all. He barely looked at her either, his eyes only sometimes darting to her, when Mr. Reed paused in his recitation of local news to puff on his pipe.Meera claimed that he seemed a proper nervous bridegroom, but Sansa fretted over the fact that he was more interested in Howland’s report on the state of the herd and harvest than in her. It was their one evening together before wedding each other in a church in which neither of them was raised, without a soul relation in attendance, and he spent it catching up with Mr. Reed. She thought she’d wish him goodnight alone on the porch at least, but the men stayed up so late that she and Meera were forced to turn in long before he left.

One night is all they can spare, for Jon is needed in High Prairie. His commander agreed to the marriage on the condition that he returns to his post in a timely fashion. In Jon’s last, brief letter to her, he explained how the onset of winter weather could make the journey exceedingly difficult. Especially in the second stage of the trip after the train takes from Saskatoon as far as Edmonton. Beyond that point there is no rail: they’ll enter the frontier, where roads are not cut and they must depend upon trails and rivers to bring them to Jon’s home. Summer is the best time to make the trip, and there is never any certainty as to when the temperatures will drop and the first snows fall. In consideration of the weather and the demands of Jon’s profession, they must leave when the train does.

Sansa requires no prettily worded apology for the rush, and she knows Jon would be no good at delivering one. Despite a sadly lacking trousseau, it doesn’t matter that they have to rush into marriage. The less dilly dallying, the better. Best to be done with it before Jon decides that living with a pampered city girl might prove to be even more trouble than hauling her across frozen lakes and rivers.

With Jon’s return approaching, Aunt Lysa’s words have been bouncing about her head for days. _She’ll never make a decent wife._

Aunt Lysa was wrong about some things. She did not _encourage_ Petyr. She wouldn’t have any notion how to encourage Jon, for all her attempts at picking the right dress and pinching her cheeks until they bloomed red. But Sansa fears Aunt Lysa might be right about not being decent wife. In Philadelphia, amongst her own set, she would have done well enough, but there are different things required of women in the wilds.

Despite living on the prairie for some months now, she is still the pampered girl her aunt scorned as an irredeemable flirt and useless waste. She knows it, as she trails her fingertips over the top of the water, leaving ripples in their wake. She’s lingered in the bath for too long already, but this might be her last indulgent, warm bath for some time. It’s only the minister and a handful of well wishers waiting for them at the church that finally pulls her from the comfort of the tub to be assisted in taking down her hair and putting on her wedding dress.

Meera gives her a minute alone in the room after they’re done, and Sansa spends it staring at her reflection. She’ll be a different person in the shortest of spaces. No longer a girl, she’ll be a woman with responsibilities to her husband and the people who depend on him. Mrs. Snow, a sergeant’s wife.

She hopes she looks the part, when she opens the door onto the main room, where Mr. Reed and Jon sit and Meera bustles in the background, putting away dishes from the late breakfast she prepared for Jon, who swore he’d eaten and still managed to scrape the plate clean, sopping up the last of the runny egg with a corner of toast. At least Meera showed Sansa how to fry an egg and bake bread, so her new husband won’t go out into the cold each morning with a rumbling stomach. That much she can do. Mostly. For the bread does sometimes fall.

Still, it’s an overwhelming thought, having a husband to cook for every morning and every night and all the other things that will be expected of her as a wife, and Sansa’s hand lingers on the knob to steady herself. The room has gone quiet and Sansa realizes she’s holding her breath, waiting for someone to say or do something, as she stands in the Reed home in a wedding dress her cousin chose for her, knowing she’d wear it while standing beside him at the altar.

Her head buzzes like she might faint, until remembers her manners. “I hope I didn’t keep you all waiting.” Talking as if everything is normal bolsters her watery knees. Breathing helps too.

With his neck gone as red as his jacket and his hands gripping his knees, Jon stares at her with tight jawed scrutiny. She forces herself not to adjust the skirt, wondering exactly what he thinks of her in it. There were some necessary alterations to make it fit as it ought, but from the moment she put it on, she felt it was meant to be hers. He chose well. She’d like to think he agrees.

Jon comes to his feet a hair faster than Mr. Reed. Though it might be age that slows Mr. Reed, Sansa hopes eagerness played a part. He did say he was lonely. She’s not the most accomplished cook, but she can keep up a conversation even with someone as quiet as Jon. Neither of them need be lonely anymore.

“Don’t you make the picture.”

Mr. Reed’s compliment is for the bride, but he isn’t looking at her, when he smiles around his pipe at Jon.

“Thank you, Mr. Reed. Meera was good enough to help.”

Meera beams from the kitchen, as she removes the apron from around her waist and folds it up, the rest of the day dedicated to celebration and not the usual routine chores. “I said she’d be in the paper what with the fancy dress the Sergeant sent her.”

“I expect she will,” Mr. Reed says with a thump to Jon’s back.

Jon says nothing. He stands there in silence, his Adam’s apple bobbing above his collar.

It’s almost laughable to think it now, but she used to lecture Jon on the fairer sex, when she was much too young to realize the absurdity of her lessons. More than once she instructed him on what sorts of things ladies liked to hear from gentlemen. She told him to compliment them on their hats, for ladies put a great deal of care into selecting their hates. But if their hat wasn’t very fine, it wouldn’t do to lie. Therefore, a compliment for their Christian name was always acceptable.

As she stands before him now, the boy become a man, she shouldn’t require a pretty little compliment from him, but she certainly wouldn’t mind one. Especially when her mind goes to Alys Karstark, who she insisted Meera point out at church a few weeks back. The sermon was lost on her that week, as she focused instead on stealing glances at the girl who might have once had an understanding with Jon. She was tall and thin, nothing to spare on her bones, which isn’t unusual on the prairie. Her hair was in a braid, hanging long and dark down her back, and her face was thin and pointy. She was dressed in a fashioned shared by every young woman you’d pass in Saskatoon—simple and practical. Sansa wouldn’t have looked twice at her, but she’s not a man and Sansa knows there is more to attraction than appearances. For all she knows, Alys would make Jon a very good wife. He isn’t one for fine words, but Sansa can imagine him saying sweet things to the wholesome looking girl—something better than praise for her hat—if he liked her well enough.

Meera chastised her unhealthy interest. _You can’t expect a man to have never looked at another woman._

Sansa knows that. She just doesn’t want to start out their wedding with him wishing someone else was coming down the aisle.

“Now, grab your brother and let’s get in the wagon,” Mr. Reed says, barking out orders in the same jolly tone he uses with his farm hands, as he grabs for his heavy leather duster and dusty hat. “Present company would wait on you all day, but we best not keep other folks waiting. You go with Jon, honey.”

“I’ve hired us a motorcar.”

Her hand slips from the door. “A motorcar?”

“A fine one. Too fine to be left alone. Jojen has been clambering all over it for the past hour,” Meera says, patting her hair. “I told him he’d best not get dusty footprints on the running board.”

“No harm done. They can be brushed off if he did.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did. But he’ll dust it himself,” Meera says, snatching up the broom on her way out.

Jon clasps his hands behind his back, stepping out of Sansa’s way as she walks to the window verify this outrageous report or a fine motorcar. “You didn’t have to hire a motorcar, Jon.”

Mr. Reed told her what a Mountie’s salary amounted to, though she couldn’t meet his eyes, when the topic arose—mother and father didn’t believe in talking so baldly about money. It’s unlikely that Jon can absorb these new expenses without economies elsewhere. The dress and the car and another rail ticket to Edmonton are all expenditures Jon wouldn’t have incurred without a new bride, and she would have been in no position to complain if the arrangements had been much simpler.

She leans left to see around the porch rail that partially blocks the view. She can see why Jojen was enamored. It’s a navy touring car with shiny brass lanterns and cherry running boards, plenty fine enough to carry her to church. Several folks in town have motorcars, but what runs on the streets of Saskatoon is typically much less grand. It looks hopelessly out of place here on the Reed ranch, where Meera sweeps the floors twice a day for dust.

“It’s beautiful.” She can feel Jon’s eyes on her, as her fingertips grip the sill. She’s ridden in one before with the Lannisters. Her parents hadn’t kept one. Her father believed them to be an outrageous fashion that would eventually go the way of the dinosaur. “Can you really drive it?”

“I’ll manage.”

It was a question for a younger, less certain boy she once knew. “Of course you can. You drove it here.”

“I might’ve stalled twice though.”

It sounds as if Jon might be teasing her, but she doesn’t turn to check, preferring to imagine she’s right rather than be proved wrong. Not because she fears the beautiful machine stalling on the way to the church, but because it nicer to think they can tease each other.

“I thought you’d prefer it in your wedding clothes to riding in the wagon.”

“I do,” she confesses, twisting around to smile at him. “Thank you. For everything.”

He rocks slightly on his brown boots, his hands still kept clasped behind his back as if for review. “You look beautiful.”

The compliment she’s been looking for prompts an unexpected fluttering in her chest that renders her momentarily at a loss for words. She thinks of the promises she made to herself last night, when she couldn’t sleep. She has to prove Aunt Lysa wrong. Sansa will be a _good_ wife just like her mother was. She will be useful and cheerful and give him very little trouble. She’ll darn his socks and patch the holes he wears in his shirts. She’ll do her best to keep him fed. She’ll be good company and do her best to make him happy, so he never has cause to regret this decision.

But she isn’t able to say any of that. She doesn’t get to utter a word of it.

“It will be your last dress for a while.” Jon steps towards her, offering her his arm. “We’ll need to buy you trousers in Edmonton. You’d freeze this winter and come summer the bugs would make a meal of you.”

If she had any of Arya in her, she’d stick out her tongue at him for spoiling the moment so thoroughly.

A warning about the realities of the life she’ll be accepting, when she pledges herself to Jon, isn’t the most romantic way to head off to the church. She wasn’t expecting romance—that’s girlish nonsense—but a little softness would have been nice. Instead, his words churn her belly as they ride in silence. But none of her fears are enough to make her change her mind. Which is why, when they reach the church and Jon comes around to give her his hand, she knows how to answer his question: “Should we then?”

It isn’t a rhetorical question. Jon is plain speaking, which she can appreciate after Petyr’s way of twisting words around until she was confused and agreeing to things she didn’t want. This is her last chance to change her mind, the escape he is offering her before the church doors close behind them both.

Sansa tilts her head. “Yes, Jon. Unless you’ve changed _your_ mind.”

“Now listen. I’ll buy you a ticket home if you’d rather. Or ask Howland to keep you if that’d make you happy.”

Someone, one of Mr. Reed’s acquaintances, ducks in late to the church, and Sansa lets her gaze follow him through the heavy door. “Do folks in High Prairie know I’m coming?”

“Yes, I wrote. They’ll be expecting you.”

“I’d hate to disappoint,” Sansa says, attempting once more to tease, but he is all seriousness, as she sits perched outside the church on the precipice of a new life.

“It’s a hard life, Sansa. Your mother and father wouldn’t have wanted it for you.”

They wanted her to be comfortable, cared for. They wouldn’t have envisioned an outpost or being forced to make do more often than not, when they put their heads together to discuss what that future would look like for their eldest daughter. But for all the wealth and prestige a marriage with Joffrey Lannister would have brought her, all the creature comforts, Sansa knew her father would have chosen differently for her. His face gave him away any time Joffrey entered the room, the same way Jon’s gives him away now.

She gives his hand a squeeze. “I’ve made up my mind. Otherwise you would have never gotten me this far.”

Her father only ever looked at Jon with the deepest affection. The circumstances would have presented a difficulty in securing her father’s approval of this marriage, but there would have been no objection to the man.

He gives her that soft half smile she remembers from childhood, the one her feigned levity failed to evoke. “Yes, I expect you have.”

She doesn’t know all she’ll face in Jon’s wild north, but she knows she’ll be safer with him than with anyone else and that it feels more like home with him than anything has in ages. That’s more than enough.

It’s not the _only_ thing in his favor. He does look more than passing handsome standing before the wooden altar in his dress red uniform and white gauntlet gloves and boots shined so bright she can see the reflection of her skirts in them. His hair is somewhat longer than last she saw him, and she wonders whether he cuts it himself using a mirror. Waiting to have it trimmed when he’s in town would result in his looking very shaggy, so she suspects it is the former. She misses the minister’s platitudes on wedded harmony, while considering whether she’ll be able to help him trim his curls or if she’d make a mess of it.

So lost in thought is she that when he leans down to kiss her cheek, the minister having given him leave to do so, she is caught entirely off guard. It is their first kiss. Though surely he’s kissed her on the cheek before. Robb always did. If not their first kiss ever, it is their first kiss as man and wife, which is a momentous thing. But the soft press of his lips to her cheek is over so quickly she hardly has time to mark it, no time to commit it to memory. Later, she feels certain she’ll feel pleasure at how gentlemanlike he is to take no liberties with her, but for now, it stirs nothing but a flicker of disappointment.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa arrives in High Prairie

The journey was a long one. Hard too, since she is no horsewoman. The first leg from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing was a rough trail, the so-called 100 mile portage, consisting of a dirt road with ruts cut deep by rain and wheels. Her seat was sore enough by the third day that she attempted walking, but soon discovered her feet were not up to the task. Jon was patient with her, though this first leg should have taken no more than five days and due to her ineptitude on the horse, it took them eight. It would have been worse if not for Jon’s insistence on modifications to her dress: the trousers acquired in Edmonton and the netting he tied about her face saved her from becoming a meal for the mosquitos that buzzed around them.

When they reached Athabasca Landing, they purchased passage on a steamboat, a welcome respite from the hardships of the trail. The _Midnight Sun_ took them through swamps and up rivers until they reached Lesser Slave Lake, where they boarded the _Northern Light_. Jon says steam power is a very recent innovation in the region. When he arrived in High Prairie, Indian guides pulled the York boats upriver by ropes on either side. It sounds vaguely romantic, but she’s grateful for the march of progress, bringing her closer to their final destination with something approaching haste. Jon says there is even talk of the railroad coming to the High Prairie district, though Sansa finds it hard to believe there are enough people who would want to come this far into the wild to make it a worthwhile enterprise.

Docking at Shaw’s Point, they embarked on the last leg of the trip. It was only slightly shorter than the first but again involved riding the horse selected by Jon in Edmonton as steady enough for an inexpert rider. Whatever relief she felt steaming westward is a thing of the past by the time she sees the first signs of High Prairie, this little village Jon believes will draw the railroad.

Jon points at the horizon and if she squints, she can make out the small house he says is the Magnarsson’s place. They were one of the earliest settlers in the area and Mrs. Magnarsson gave birth to the first white child in High Prairie. It's a distinction that lends some local respect, but they're Swedes and speak very limited English, so Jon says he’ll spare her an introduction that will involve a lot of hand waving and mutual misunderstanding. That can wait for another day, when she's less weary from travel.

Sansa tries to imagine what kind of gestures Jon will use to indicate she is his wife. It was easy enough on the platform in Saskatoon. Having led her up the creaky stairs by her elbow, Jon announced her as Mrs. Snow, and they were inked in the log book as Sergeant and Mrs. Snow. It felt startling real to hear him say it and odder yet to have someone accept the pronouncement without question. No one at home would believe she married Jon Snow, but everyone here will take it as a matter of course that Sergeant Snow has brought back a wife. It's only when she exposes herself as completely helpless on the prairie that they'll be surprised their sergeant chose so poorly.

There will be plenty of introductions to make now that they’ve reached Jon’s post, but the one acquaintance already made is Jon’s partner, Sergeant Tollett, who comes out to greet her with his jacket partly askew. He insists she not dismount on his account, which is a relief, a welcomed bit of gallantry, since she aches so that she doesn't know whether she could bear to mount again once she's gotten down. Jon’s partner says he knows they must want to get to the cabin and doesn't mean to keep them but a moment. The brief report he gives Jon, however, is enough to make Sansa blanch.

He begins by giving an account of a murder that took place a week ago. The murderer left the area and the witness was too drunk to be of much help.

"Have you reached any conclusions?"

"I have. It's unsolvable."

"Unless someone else steps forward."

"Unlikely. Only certain thing is the mountain of paperwork it's going to make."

It's two crimes, since alcohol is illegal in the territory, and Sergeant Tollett complains about the difficulty of finding the still that he knows must be nearby. That is the most unnerving news, but there are other things apparently worth noting. There was a bout of sweating sickness that has passed. A cow was stollen while they were both in Edmonton, no signs of wolves being to blame. And the harvest wasn't what they’d hoped due to lack of rain at the beginning of the season.

He sends them off with a parting warning: the Kapawe’no think this will be the hardest winter in memory and they might all starve. Sitting before the fire in the Reed home, she listened to the men talk about the Canadian winters, the ones they rank as the worst in memory. It always felt like they took a certain pleasure in recounting how low they'd sunk to survive.

She thought she kept her face pleasantly blank, but when they leave Sergeant Tollett behind, Jon reins in close to her. “That was a season’s worth of news. Sounds worse all at once.”

“Quite a bit worse," she agrees with a backward glance. "Sergeant Tollett sounded convinced we'd all be dead in a few months. Is everyone so optimistic here?"

“Hard life makes for hard people."

Jon's not hard though, just serious, and at least there's no pretense there.

"Edd’s delivery leaves something to be desired, but he's a good man to have around.”

“Through a hard winter, you mean.”

Jon gives the reins a shake and her horse responds, complacently following after Jon’s. “Folks are always saying it’ll be the worst winter in memory. I won't says it's easy, but I have experience with a difficult winter. I'll take care of you.”

_Of course I’ll care for her, Howland._

It does her good to remember his promise.

As does the sight of two more prosperous looking farms that appear capable of surviving a long winter. The center of High Prairie is carved out of two large farms that sit opposite each other. Sergeants Snow and Tollett’s post, the postal office, store, school, and Anglican Church clump together in front of these farms’ two-story farmhouses and large hip roofed barns. They're decidedly more substantial than anything they've seen on their way into High Prairie. The Magnarsson’s place was just one room, as was nearly every other place they passed, and this collection of buildings are the first she's noticed with solid roofs.

When she commented on the sod houses they passed, Jon said the sod roofs served their purpose well enough. Except for when it rained. He once had supper with a family during a summer downpour, where the oldest daughter had to hold an umbrella over the stove while her mother cooked.

“Are most the homes sod?” Sansa asks, turning in the saddle to watch the center of town grow more distant with each step of her horse.

“Most." Jon's hand comes up to touch the brim of his hat. "Not yours though.”

What Sansa likes best about Jon’s assurance is that he called it hers. She always dreamt of the day she'd have a household of her own. Aspirations of being a hostess people universally admired were part of her daydreams of being a wife and mother. Hiring musicians and an opera singer for her evening parties, filling her artfully decorated house with hothouse flowers, and serving a dinner so fine that everyone would want to steal away her cook were the imaginary trappings of the life she thought would be hers when she married Joffrey.

Sansa doesn't expect she’ll be throwing any dinner parties, let alone hosting a European soprano for her High Prairie neighbors’ entertainment. But she’ll have Sergeant Tollett over for supper if he's brave enough to risk her cooking again. She’ll keep Jon’s house and help make it a home without all the finery she once thought indispensable. It's the least she can do as his wife.

Thus far, she hasn't much felt like they were married. Other than the brotherly kiss he bestowed on her in the church, he hasn't touched her except to help her on and off her horse or adjust the netting fixed behind her head. Even on their wedding night on the train to Edmonton, he kept his distance.

Distance was hard to come by on a Canadian Pacific sleeper car. Despite the berths being double wide, there wasn't much room to spare, when they lowered the cushions for the night. There was unaccustomed intimacy in being alone with a man in such a confined space, and when Jon pulled the privacy curtain closed, she didn't know what to do with her hands. Jon was more purposeful. He removed his handsome red jacket, hanging it above them, and his boots—the porters scold if gentlemen leave them on—loosened his cuffs, and she did her best not to watch.

She felt some wedding night jitters, but she wasn't afraid. She could trust Jon, and it was hardly a scandalous position to be nearly fully clothed shoulder to shoulder next to each other. It reminded her of sharing the bed with her brothers, during a thunderstorm, their hot little bodies splayed out on either side of her and their elbows jabbing her all night. That was her only point of comparison.

Jon took more care than that. At least she assumed it was concern for her person that made him place the pillow the porter had provided them lengthwise between them before telling her goodnight and tucking his arms behind his head. Peeking through half closed eyes at him, he looked uncomfortable. In fact, as they rode along in the darkness, Sansa could tell from his breathing and the restlessness of his legs that Jon was not asleep. Nor was he likely to fall asleep if he had to keep alert enough to avoid rolling out of the berth, perched as he was on the edge. Should the train give a jolt, Sansa worried about his safety. After dreaming up half a dozen ways he might be injured, she rolled on her side and whispered his name.

_You can move the pillow, Jon._

He refused: _We’re newlyweds_.

He placed something between them at every stopping house between Edmonton and High Prairie. It sometimes feels as if he's purposely chosen a bigger something as the days have gone by, and she wonders whether they will always require a plump barrier between them and whether Jon will never remove his shirt and trousers and remain forever awkwardly dressed beside her. She hopes things will be somewhat different in the privacy of his home, for as long as he refuses to make himself comfortable, she can hardly bring herself to wear a nightgown.

When they reach the house on the northern outskirts of the settlement, Sansa can tell Jon is avoiding looking over at her, perhaps not wanting to see her reaction. He needn't be nervous that she’ll be displeased, and even if she was, she could hide it well enough. She's been preparing herself mentally for much less. The house is bigger than Sansa expected for a single officer. It's situated beside a grove of aspen and Jon says the river is close by over the rise. Good for fishing, he adds, though he must know she's never fished in her life. The house has weathered to a soft grey and the grass grows up around it almost tall enough to reach the glazed windows on either side of door. It’s rather picturesque if a little lonely looking.

“It’ll be stuffy after being closed up all these months,” Jon says, dismounting with enviable ease. Her grace on the dance floor doesn’t translate, and now she is the awkward one and Jon the one whose movements are fluid and sure. “But you’ll be glad to be off the trail, I suppose.”

“You can't begin to imagine. If I never sit a horse again, it'll be too soon,” she says, as he ducks under the neck of his horse to come around to lift her down.

“You shouldn't have to for a good long while.”

He grips her about the waist and lifts. He's good about putting her down softly enough that it doesn't jar her sore bones. He's gentle with her.

“You didn’t tell me you had a barn.” Sansa says, discretely reaching behind herself to brush off her dusty seat, as he gathers the horses’ reins and leads them towards the hitching post beside the barn.

“Yes, and chickens.”

They shouldn't starve if there are chickens. She learned how to collect eggs in Saskatoon, and Meera taught her how to fry an egg. She doesn't know how to milk a cow, but milk would be nice too. “Any other animals?”

Hopefully nothing she'd be expected to kill. She couldn't abide that.

“I've got a dog. Ghost.”

“That's an ominous name. What kind of dog is he?”

“He was a sled dog before I got him.” Her mother had a pair of Pekingese, but Sansa expects this is different kind of dog if it pulled a sled. “Half wolf,” he adds, confirming her suspicion. “Makes for a good lead dog. Good watchdog too, so you’ll be safe here when I'm gone on business.”

“Will you be gone a good deal?”

Stopping his efforts to loosen her mare’s saddle, he glances over his shoulder at her. “I hope not.”

Sansa does too. She doesn't care to be separated from him. Or be left alone.

Sansa wanders towards the barn. It's the same grey as the cabin with a large wagon door below and a smaller hay door above. Other than old straw scattered along the floor, it’s empty. It has a musty sort of old smell like abandoned stables.

“Where are they? The animals?”

“With the Mormonts. They kept an eye on things for me.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Yes. You can meet them tomorrow, when I go to fetch the animals back. If you're up to it of course.”

“I'd like to meet your friends.” It’ll help her get a better sense of the man Jon’s become besides knowing he was good enough to take her as his wife.

Sansa thought she'd wait while Jon drew water for the horses, but he having tied them to the hitching post with enough slack that they can graze in the patchy grass and lifted off their saddles, he gives her mare a solid pat on her flank and gestures to the house. “I expect you'd like to see the place.”

“The horses will be all right?”

“Won't take but a minute to get you settled.”

The grass has gone to seed leading up to the house and it brushes against the canvas of her trousers with a soft whooshing sound that is repeated by the rustling of the aspens, filling the silence between herself and Jon as he walks her to the door.

She’ll plant a garden, she thinks turning sideways to picture where best to place it. Not that she knows the first thing about keeping a plant alive: the only thing she ever did was prevent her posey of violets from being smashed, when people embraced her at parties. But surely there is some English speaking woman in the settlement that would be willing to help her at the start.

Distracted as she is by her plans, she doesn't see that Jon has opened the door or that he's bending down, when he announces, “Hold on.”

She gives something like a squeak, when his arm scoops her under the knees and hauls her up to his chest, and she scrambles to obey, locking her hands behind his neck.

“For luck,” he says, shouldering through the door and over the threshold.

As much as she's mused over what her home will look like, this close to Jon, she can’t do much more than stare up into his familiar face. He has the same solemn eyes as her father did but with the lashes so dark and long that she’s almost envious. At the corners are fine lines now. They're signs of age, perhaps, though Sansa hopes it means he is sometimes in the habit of smiling. His pale skin is reddened from sun over the bridge of his nose, where the shadow of his hat fell short and failed to protect him. There's the beard, of course, dark and thick—he didn't have that as a boy—which has grown in over the course of their time on the trail.

She wonders what changes he counts, when he stops in the middle of the room and stares back unflinchingly at her.

His brows knit. “I won't drop you.”

“I know.”

Yes, he sometimes smiles. He does it now, one side of his full mouth rising higher than the other, as his gaze dips to her lips. “I'd forgotten: you like that I'm tall.”

Sansa’s breath hitches. If she wouldn’t be in danger of taking a tumble, she'd pull free of his arms. “Meera shouldn't have told you that.”

Traitor.

Though she can hardly hold it against her friend, when he tips his head to kiss her. Not on the cheek like last time. No, this is a proper kiss, a real one. His lips are warm and she can smell the horses on him and sweat and leather, and she likes that as much as the way his hand splays against her back, fingertips pressing so that she feels it through her corset. He adjusts her against him, drawing her in closer and higher against his chest. He kisses her again a second time at a different angle that makes her heart beat faster. They could go on like this forever—she wouldn't mind—but she no more runs her finger along the wool collar of his jacket to test the softness of the curls there, than he pulls back and sets her down on her feet, slowly, letting her slide down his tall frame until she's found her footing.

Clearing his throat, he points out the obvious, “This is the main room.”

She huffs, swallowing a laugh, and bobs her head.

A stove sits in the middle of the room close by a table with one chair, where Jon must eat his meals. A rocking chair sits before the fireplace at the back of the room, but other than the rag rug before the hearth, the room is without any feminine touches. She'll have work to do to make it feel like home.

Jon shows her a smaller room on the left, a second bedroom large enough for a child, though he doesn't say that. The room on the right is the larger bedroom, and it's actually better appointed than the main room. The light is dim this late in the day with the window facing east, but she can still make out a dresser, small side table, bed, and flimsy white lace curtains that hang somewhat limply over the window. Whoever lived here before left them, Sansa guesses.

What catches her eye is a quilt she recognizes spread over the bed. It sat on Jon’s bed at home too. She walks over to the bed.

"You've kept this all this time."

"It's no trouble to pack."

She knows why he has brought it all this way. It’s made of blue and grey squares saved from Aunt Lyanna’s dresses. Sansa's mother patched it together for Jon after he came to live with them.

Sansa never thought to see something her mother’s hands touched again. Much less so far from home. She sits on the bed’s edge. Running her hand over the top, she marks the evenness of her mother’s stitches.

“Sansa?”

His voice is thick with concern and when she looks up at him the amusement from earlier is gone from his eyes. “It isn't much, the cabin.”

“I told you I wasn't as spoilt as I used to be. It's more than fine. I think it's already been aired out.”

“So I noticed.” He swipes an index finger across the top of the dresser. “Cleaned too. Someone must have wanted to make a good first impression.”

It warms her to think of her new neighbors caring enough about Jon to do something for her by extension. “You’ll find out for me who I'm to thank, won't you?”

“I'll put my best men on the investigation.”

She folds her hands in her lap and smiles up at him.

Jon reaches up to rub his beard. “You’ve been very brave, Sansa.”

That's a compliment she's never received from anyone. Not even after her family died. “You don't have to say that.”

“I'll admit I wasn't sure you'd do as well as you did on that trail.”

She thought she’d been testing Jon’s patience with her weakness.

“I best get to the horses,” he says, making for the door. “I’ll bring in your roll in a few minutes.”

“Good,” she says, as Jon pauses in the doorway, his hand wrapped around the jamb. “I'd like to put on a dress and be rid of these trousers at least for a little while.”

They don't fit as snugly as they did when she tried them in Edmonton, after having eaten less than she should in the stopping houses and exerted herself far more effort than usual. They saved her from the mosquitos, but they make her feel ridiculous. If Jon means to kiss her again, she’d like to look like a woman when he does.

“Why?” For the second time in the space of a few minutes, Sansa feels twitchy under Jon’s evaluative stare. “They suit you.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa doesn't want to spend her first snowstorm in High Prairie alone.

The Mormonts weren’t what Sansa expected. She imagined a proper family, a little rough around the edges. No different from the other people she'd met on the frontier: father, mother, a handful of children. She was a mite sore with Jon, when she met them and discovered they were a household of women—only women. Save for Maege Mormont’s youngest grandchild, who at two years could hardly count as the man of the house.

Not that Sansa thought she had anything to fear from Maege or the eldest daughter, Alysane, but it was an odd situation. None of the girls or the little boy seemingly had a father. That was the kind of situation men at home, men of good family, would be careful not to connect themselves with in any way. Jon had no such compunction.

When Sansa asked him about the children, he laughed. _I don’t think anyone has ever had the nerve to ask. Fathered by a bear perhaps._

Sansa might be something of an innocent, but she knows very well that bears don’t father children.

On the other hand, with these women, anything is possible. They make the usual frontier housewife seem fit to join the ladies her mother played bridge with every other Wednesday. They’re passing strange, and Sansa doubts she could warm to them. If their appraising looks upon introductions were anything to go on, the feeling is mutual. They evidently don’t think much of Sergeant Snow’s choice of bride, and despite being some of the only English speaking women in the settlement, they never visit, leaving her to shift for herself from the start.

But with Jon gone to Shaw’s Point on company business and the first heavy snow of the year beginning to fall in a thick blanket, Sansa decides even neighbors as eccentric as the Mormonts are better than waiting to be snowed in alone. She doesn’t sit for long, watching the snow pile up around the edges of the barn. After tending to the animals, she returns to the house to fetch Ghost and close everything up.

Time is of the essence: if she waits too long, it will be too dangerous to head out. Jon has stressed how treacherous these winter storms can be. People have been lost in the snow, trying to get no farther than their barns, she remembers Jon telling her in that solemn tone of his, as she pulls on her heavy fur lined boots.

With Ghost padding at her heels, Sansa hikes in calf high snow towards the Mormont cabin. It’s wet, heavy snow, and Sansa can feel her cheeks brightening from the exertion of trudging through it as much as from the cold. There isn't far to go, and it isn't long before she spots the curl of smoke from their chimney. It's a beacon that promises warmth and some company, however disinclined they might be to play host to her.

Surely, they’ll invite her in. These Northern folks can be as chilly as their weather, but they also understand the perils of winter. No one would turn her away.

Still, she hesitates at their weathered door. Only the prospect of fighting her way back through the snow to a lonely, empty house forces Sansa to knock, after she looks back over her shoulder at the deep footprints she and Ghost left behind them.

In a house full of this many people, it doesn't take long for someone to get to the door. It's Alysane that answers, letting snow blow in, as she opens the door wide. Her face shifts from shock to unfiltered amusement, as Sansa bends to ruffle Ghost’s fur. “Mrs. Snow. Must say, unexpected seeing you.”

“Sergeant Snow is at Shaw’s Point,” Sansa says with a nervous flicker of a smile. “I’m alone.” Sansa leans to the side to see around Alysane and lifts a hand to Maege in greeting. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“Gone is he?” Maege calls from where she sits on a three-legged stool beside the stove with Alysane's little boy kicking in her lap.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Men are terrible unreliable. At best they suffer from bad timing.”

Jon is about the most reliable person Sansa has ever met, but she doesn’t intend on raising an objection to Maege’s assessment, while standing on a frozen doorstep. There is an art to being agreeable.

“Come on in, child,” Maege says, wiping her hands on her apron.

Sansa breathes out a white puff of frosty air in relief at the invitation, however resigned it sounds, coming from Maege’s tightlipped frown. “I’ve brought eggs,” Sansa offers with a lift of the basket hooked on her arm, full to the brim with the speckled eggs she collected this morning from the chickens she’s left behind in the barn with plenty of feed and bedding. It’s a paltry offering in return for joining them for the duration of the storm, but she’s hoping it will be enough for them to suffer her company.

Maege waves her hand with no small measure of irritation. “You’re letting all the warm out, Alysane. Come inside and shut that damn thing.”

“Shall I tie Ghost in your barn?” Sansa asks, twisting in the doorway, ready to hurry Ghost to the barn if that’s their preference. Jon always keeps him in the house, but the Mormonts might have different standards. Sansa won't let the state of their housekeeping shape her assumptions on that point.

“No point in that now,” Alysane says, heaving the bar over the door to close it behind Sansa. “He’s already sired pups on my bitch. Didn’t see fit to keep them apart this summer and you see what comes of it.”

“Pups?”

“Over by the fire,” Alysane says, putting her hip into the door and crossing her arms over her ample chest.

“Five of them,” Maege supplies, and Sansa remembers to at least hand over the eggs before hurrying to the hearth, where Alysane’s daughter and Maege’s three younger girls sit cross-legged, their laps full of fuzzy haired pups. “Born about two weeks ago now.”

With Jon gone, Ghost is a comfort to have around, but wriggling puppies are something else altogether. Sansa doesn’t think twice about finding a place between the little girls and holding out her hands for one of the squinty little creatures. She lifts the proffered pup to be eye to eye with it.

“She’s one of the bitches,” Lyra says, as Sansa turns the quiet pup from side to side, admiring its rounded face.

“Oh, aren’t you a pretty thing. The proper little lady out of the bunch,” Sansa says, given that the rest of the puppies are tumbling over each other, while their sister calmly allows Sansa to tuck her into her elbow.

Lyra rolls her eyes at her assessment of the pup, but Sansa doesn’t mind. A little sistere's passing annoyance is familiar territory: Arya would have done the same.

The pups take some of the awkwardness out of being thrown together, providing a natural diversion, when the already sparse conversation wanes. Lyanna, the youngest of Maege’s daughters, still looks at her with narrow eyed suspicion and keeps snippily asserting that she preferred Ygritte—whoever that might be—but at least Sansa seems to have won one Mormont over. It’s not yet supper when Jory pronounces that Sansa should have one of the pups once they’re weaned.

Of course, Jory most likely isn’t charged with making such judgments. But it’s no secret that Sansa has won over her preferred pup too. Sansa smiles to herself, lifting the pretty little bitch pup up to bop its nose with her own. This is the one she’d like to keep if given the choice. Best not to get her hopes up though: she’s not sure Alysane intends to give any of them away or whether Jon would want another dog, so she pretends not to have heard Jory’s childish offer.

Half a dozen times since she arrived, Sansa has been on the verge of putting down the pup and offering to help with some task, so as to make herself less of a burden. But it isn’t until Maege drags herself up from her stool to make supper that Sansa gathers up her courage to follow through with the notion.

“I can help,” Sansa says, coming to her knees and brushing off her lap.

“Not much need for help,” Maege says handing the boy off to her daughter.

Maege makes no apologies for anything, Sansa suspects, but her announcement that supper will be bannock, beans, and bacon feels like a warning for a spoiled city girl. If she would have turned up her nose at Maege’s supper plans once, she doesn’t now. In the short time since coming to High Prairie, Sansa’s become accustomed to that most basic of prairie meals.

“That’s Jon’s favorite breakfast.”

“Never met a man who didn’t take to a good breakfast of beans and bacon,” Alysane says, though Sansa doesn’t imagine the Mormont women are in the habit of cooking for any man.

Not that Sansa can boast of any great acquired talent or experience in the kitchen. Morning beans and bacon Sansa can manage with some cinsistency, but she has never produced bannock that could be called anything but inedible. Jon choked down several bad attempts with as much determination as he ate her salty pie, but he’s taken to making the bannock himself, insisting he likes to help. It smacks of the wifely failure Aunt Lysa once sneeringly predicted.

“I make a mess of bannock.”

“There’s nothing to it,” Lyra says with arched brows. It’s an opinion Sansa suspects Jon shares, though he is too generous to admit it to her face.

“I’m not much of a cook.”

“How’s it turn out?” Maege asks, lifting a cast iron pan off the table onto the stove. “Your bannock?”

“The bottom ends up burnt or the whole thing is as heavy as a stone.”

Maege grumbles something unintelligible and then speaks more plainly. “Get off the floor there and I’ll show you what to do.”

It’s less embarrassing to stand at Maege’s shoulder and take instruction than it is to watch Jon work over the stove, wishing she wasn’t so helpless, and when they sit down at the table to eat, she thinks she might be able to reproduce their efforts at home. Hopefully. Ghost noses at her pant leg and Sansa smiles down at him, a constant reminder of his uncomplaining master. Jon could probably happily subsist on what’s spread before them if push came to shove, but Sansa could do without the communal cup they pass around. So, she does, passing it without comment.

Instead, she thanks Maege for the lesson and sharing her home with her, but the older woman’s good graces have their limit. “See if you have thanks for me after sharing a bed with Jory and Lyanna.”

“I won’t share a bed with her,” Lyanna says with a scowl, no fonder of their visitor than she was two hours ago.

“Oh, yes you will,” Maege retorts, pushing back from the table. “You'll do as I say or you'll sleep with the baby in his cot.”

The threat makes Lyanna's nose wrinkle.

“And you’ll help tidy up this supper too,” Alysane adds before giving her sisters a wink from across the plank table. “You’ll have a foot in your back no matter which way you turn, Mrs. Snow.”

Sansa doesn’t get a chance to see whether her sleep will be as fraught with difficulty as Maege and Alysane expected. Shortly after the young ones have turned in and she’s slipped off her trousers and flannel shirt made from Jon’s old shirt cut down to size, there’s a thunderous pounding on the Mormont’s door. If Sansa was alone, she wouldn’t dare answer the door, but Maege shows no signs of reluctance. Not even being dressed for bed stops her from throwing the latch to see who would come knocking at this hour. Peeking around the doorframe of the children’s room, Sansa wraps her shawl about her shoulders, as the cabin door opens with a blast of cold she can feel from her bare feet to the tip of her chilled nose.

A dark head that towers over Maege’s stout frame leans into the cabin. It’s Jon, Sansa realizes as he loosens one side of his grey woolen scarf from about his face. The sight of him makes her chest flutter with something like relief or pleasure. She’s felt it before, when he’s come through the door, but the unexpectedness of his arrival focuses the feeling, pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“Sansa isn’t at the house,” he pants, as if the cold has stolen his breath. “I told her not to wander in storms.”

Just as Ghost stirs from the hearth, ready to greet Jon, Sansa steps out of the shadows, acting in concert to reveal their presence here. She’s ready to call to him, but Maege puts her work reddened hand on Jon’s arm before Sansa can get the words out. “Calm yourself, young man. She’s here.”

His heavily mittened hand comes up, covering his beard to scrub at his mouth, as his eyes find Sansa over Maege’s shoulder.

“Been here most the day, entertaining the girls.” It’s a liberal assessment, no doubt prompted by a fondness for Jon. “You’re the only fool riding around in a blizzard. Come inside.” Her final command comes with a tug that draws him halfway over the threshold, stumbling with unconcealable exhaustion.

“I’ve got to stable my horse,” he says, his eyes still fixed upon Sansa, despite Ghost’s efforts to draw his attention, bumping his master’s thigh repeatedly with his head.

“I’ll help,” Alysane says, heaving herself up from the table, where she’d been cleaning a rifle she’d pulled from over the hearth after putting her boy down.

“Obliged.”

“Nothing for it, with you hardly fit to be upright,” Maege says with a snort, as her daughter grabs for one of the thick leather coats hung by the door.

With a sharp command for Ghost to stay, they blow back out into the snow swirled night. The door slams with the wind.

Maege shakes her head. “Don’t expect he stopped to eat.”

“No, I expect not. He was in a state.” Concern unlike she had seen on Jon's face since they were married lined his brow.

“He’ll feel better presently, now that he knows you’re safe, but he’ll want something warm. Luckily there’s enough left over to fill a belly. Did you see where Alysane put the bannock?”

“Yes.”

“Pull it out. I’ll warm the stove.”

Being undressed in the company of a man might not trouble Maege, but it rattles Sansa, even though Jon is her husband of some weeks. When Jon and Alysane return from the barn with snow melting in their hair, Sansa feels every inch of how little she has on. She pulls her shawl tighter about her shoulders, when Jon’s gaze settles on her, aware of how her chemise gaps and her drawers hang on her hips too low as she’s slimmed from life at the outpost. At night together, she’s not usually so exposed: she has her modesty and Jon always respects it, keeping his back to her until the candle is blown out.

Maege presents Jon with the warmed bannock and beans, and there’s no hesitation before he scoops them up into his mouth, chasing the beans around his plate with hunks of bannock, acting as if he’s half-starved. Maybe he is. After all, she’s certainly seen him looking better. It’s only after he’s drained a second cup of water with a gasp that anyone ventures to speak.

“Your wife made the bannock,” Maege says, sliding the platter his way again, as his fork scrapes his plate clean. “Have your fill.”

Sansa gives a quick shake of her head, when he looks up and grabs another bannock off the proffered tin. “You lie like that to him, and he’ll expect bannock that good from me tomorrow.”

“Oh, no harm in it. I wager he already thinks there’s nothing you can do wrong,” Maege says. “Hung the moon and the stars in the sky, did she, Snow?”

Jon scuffs his feet underneath the table and Sansa doesn’t know where to look: their hostess has managed quite neatly to embarrass them both. Given her broad smile, that was her intention.

Maege thumps the table with the meat of her palm. “Clear the dishes yourself. Alysane will bring the pair of you bedding. Hard floor will have to suit,” she says, establishing without debate that Sansa will no longer be sharing a bed with the little girls.

Since Jon left for Shaw’s Point, Sansa has tossed in bed, finding it strangely difficult to sleep without his presence beside her, but she’s not certain she’ll sleep any better tonight now that he’s returned. The girls might have been a safer bet.

After thanking Maege, Jon doesn’t have much to say as Sansa brushes crumbs off the table and finds the drying towel amongst the pile of linens in the basket by the stove. She wouldn’t mind the quiet, except there’s a tension in the air between them that grows tangible in the absence of conversation.

After getting married, there was awkwardness between them at times. Not surprising given that they were never very close and their situation was so suddenly altered, but they’ve settled into a friendly sort of routine that smoothed over most of the initial hesitation between them. Until tonight: there’s nothing routine in this unfamiliar place, left alone together with her waiting on him in flimsy cotton.

Her gratitude for Alysane’s reappearance, banishing their solitude with her arms full of a bundle of quilts, however, is fleeting. For everything about her demeanor speaks of mischief making. She smirks as she tosses her burden on the floor before the hearth. “How ever you manage to stay warm, do the rest of us a favor and keep it down to a dull roar, Snow.”

Whether or not the Mormont women are any keener on her for knowing her some better, Sansa couldn’t say, but they have gotten a measure of amusement out of the bargain.

Jon clears his throat and passes Sansa his empty plate with a grave sounding goodnight for Alysane. Not one to be dismissed, Alysane lingers with one hand on her hip, watching them both, as Sansa does her best to look busy and Jon stands up from the table. She finally takes the last burning candle with her, leaving them in the darkened main room with only the fire to light to Sansa’s task.

“You left Shaw’s Point early?” Sansa asks too brightly. What she’d like to do is tell him how glad she is to see him, but she can’t quite admit it with people on either side of the cabin’s wooden walls.

Without reason, Sansa feels as if she is guilty of something and about to be exposed for her unnamed crime. Her pulse jumps, as she steals a look, when Jon bends to fuss with the bedding.

“Some. Though not as early as I would have liked. There was some business that I couldn’t dispense with.”

“But you’re home sooner than I expected.”

“I pushed my horse hard, trying to ride ahead of the storm,” he says, moving to the hearth, where Ghost has settled again after spending Jon’s impromptu supper curled beneath the table. She watches Jon’s tall silhouette in front of the dying flames. He shifts his shoulders in a way that projects his weariness. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“You needn’t have worried. I listened. I’m not going to wander off in a blizzard.”

With a hand on the roughhewn mantel, he turns to watch her stack his dried plate with the rest. “I looked for you in the barn. Saw the animals were seen to.”

“I didn't know how long I'd be gone.”

“It's been a long day for both of us then.”

Sansa hums a noncommittal response, as her day can't rightly compare with his.

“Tired?”

She was until he showed up and looked at her in a way she wasn’t familiar with. Now she can’t imagine falling asleep. A fact that has nothing to do with their makeshift sleeping arrangements. “A little.”

His hand slips from the mantel and pulls at the collar of his red coat, popping the first brass button. “Come to bed.”

She's shocked by the request or maybe the weight behind his stare, but she manages a quick nod, as if her compliance is second nature. If she wasn't so focused on looking serene, she might have seen the table's corner. She checks it hard with her hip, as his hand closes around his coat’s belt buckle.

“You all right?” he asks, pulling the tine free from the brown leather of his belt.

She moves faster, in case something else might betray her before she reaches the makeshift bed. Pausing in his disrobing, he puts out his hand to help her to the floor, and with his warm fingers wrapping around hers, her delayed yes comes out too soft for him probably to hear despite the quiet of the sleeping house. Then again, as she slips beneath the pile of quilts, puts her back to him, and tucks her cheek into the too flat pillow, she can make out his every move: the shrug of his jacket, the wool rasping against the flannel of his shirt beneath, and the dull echo of his heavy riding boots hitting the wood floor. And if she can’t quite hear the sound his breeches make upon removal, she knows as the floor creaks that Jon is stepping free of them.

Jon is particular about his service weapon and his uniform, so he’ll fold it carefully, as he does at home. And though she has watched the exercise before, she’s glad she can’t see him now in his snug drawers. Glad enough that she doesn’t turn to wish him goodnight, when he kneels down beside her with an audible popping of his knees.

Since Alysane only brought one pillow, Sansa scoots over, giving him space to rest his head alongside hers. Bone weary from a long day, Jon is often asleep as soon as his head meets the pillow, and Sansa finds herself falling nearly as quick these days, her body succumbing to the strain of chores to which she is unaccustomed. It should be no different tonight, especially for Jon, but he does not remain unmoving behind her, insensible with sleep. His body twists, brushing against her briefly, until they are lined up like spoons in her mother’s silver box.

His exhale is warm against her neck, where her hair pulls into the braid she did for bed. “Have they been teasing you?” he asks, his voice gravely with fatigue.

She tilts her head back and lifts her brows with a half-smile. “It’s no matter. They were good enough to take me in.”

“I didn’t think to find you here.”

“I own this might seem like the last place I’d come, but the thought of being alone or…” She lets her head roll back before finishing, “Going to some strange man’s home? This seemed my best option.”

“No, you did good to come here.”

With no one to write, Sansa hadn’t yet thought to ask for pen and paper. Having some at hand would have allowed her to leave him a note and they would have avoided any confusion about her whereabouts. She’ll rectify that as soon as she can make her way to the store. Meera might appreciate a letter too.

“I’m sorry if I worried you.” She knows she did. She doesn’t think she’ll ever forget the look on his face, when that door opened, and while she is sorry to have caused alarm, there is something to being worried over that warms her better than the fire.

The quilts shift over them, as his arm moves and his hand skims her hip. Her chemise doesn’t meet her drawers, having hitched up too high when she arranged herself here on the floor, so his fingers meet bare skin. It pebbles at his touch. “This all right?”

“Yes.”

Yes, it does feel right. Even as his hand comes to rest more solidly against her, following the curve of her waist, all she can think is _more_. Bolder than she’s been in ages, she curls in on herself, bringing her back flush against him. In answer, his hand slides up over the flat of her stomach and hauls her in tight.

His lips brush the arch of her neck, whispering words against her that he can’t manage to finish. “When you weren’t at the house…”

She covers his hand with her own. It’s just their out of sync breathing for a space, slowly falling into rhythm until he presses a kiss behind her ear. “I just want to get you home.”

“I'm home with you. Here or wherever.”

“In our bed then.”

It's a very long time before sleep claims her.


End file.
